MedLab®

Open Innovation

To achieve effective R&D and to keep pace with the other players in the market, MILL identified open innovation as the solution with the following objectives:

centralising the intelligence in one unit.

maintaining a de-centralised operating business model and expertise.

We have given our staff the flexibility to innovate through MedLab®. We recognise that not every idea will work but in the rapidly evolving markets in which we operate, a constant flow of new ideas, and the capability to bring them to fruition if they are workable or close them down if they fail, is critical to the sustainability of our business.

MedLab® is an inter-departmental working group dedicated to managing and developing the Intellectual Property (IP) and Innovation asset value within the company, by prioritising the R&D initiatives and innovation activities. The company now benefits from having an R&D centre that manages and administers its know-how (IP and patents) in a world of widely distributed knowledge. The centre facilitates innovation by providing the bridging, brokering, and knowledge transfer necessary to bring together the range of different teams. This unit is fed with ideas from everywhere in the organisation and develops and customise ideas for different clients utilising the know-how and experience in adapting the ideas to products and/or services to different markets and jurisdictions.

MedLab® facilitates idea generation – these ideas are created within MedLab® with collaboration across all units within the company and external collaboration with strategic parties. MedLab® facilitates conversion of these ideas, through their selection, screening and initial funding, developing the idea through to initial results stage. MedLab facilitates diffusion of these ideas, encouraging their spread and dissemination across the company.

Collaboration with External Experts

While MedLab® has a flexible and agile structure of Innovation Specialists, it can count on a multiple of these as it can rely on additional resources and competencies of “best in class” external experts or partners exploiting extra brain power to identify innovative solutions.

Traditionally companies generate innovation internally through the creative efforts of their people. However, this has not always proved sufficient to sustain competitive advantage. Therefore MedLab® also leverages on Crowdsourcing which adds value to the innovation process through multiple routes:

leverage on additional brain power

rely on experts for any specific discipline

receiving multiple inputs (ideas, solutions, proposals, etc.)

MedLab® orchestrates the collection of ideas, including the crowdsourcing process, evaluating and ranking. Only the best idea will survive through the thorough and robust internal selection process. We consider crowdsourcing like a powerful accelerator that allows us to benchmark the market and to rapidly collect ideas.

MedLab® creates its own open innovation market place where it harmonises different single interests in order to develop innovative ideas.For this reason MedLab®’s networking efforts gather the best sources in the Dublin Innovation Hub in order to create collaboration aimed at delivering innovation.

The collaborative process in developing innovative concepts allows each party to focus on their core strengths while leveraging those of the other party, creating synergies that ultimately benefit clients through developing superior innovation.

Mediolanum International Life dac is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland as an undertaking authorised under the European Communities (Life Insurance) Regulations, 1994 to carry on Life Insurance Business.